Blades, Braids, & Ballet
by Osidiano
Summary: The Red Room wanted the Winter Soldier to train their Black Widows. To that end, they needed him to remember them and their strengths and weaknesses. They needed him to remain whole while he taught them. This was a mistake. The soldier was meant to stay broken. After awhile, he began to remember other things, like that he was a brother and this was not right.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** DAMNIT. I promised myself I wouldn't start this until I was done with Simple! But I couldn't stop myself from writing the beginning ;_; This was originally posted on the ckm.

Anyway, this fic uses the MCU timeline, and will end up being a multiple POV story. Bucky does not end up working for Hydra at any point in this AU. I use some plot-points revealed by the Agent Carter TV series with regard to the MCU, the Red Room, and Leviathan/Department X. Other plot-point/references are from Brubaker's 2004 Captain America: Winter Soldier comic and Edmonson's 2014 Black Widow comic. Consider there to be blanket warnings for **Graphic Depictions of Violence** , **Implied/Referenced Torture** , and **Implied/Referenced Child Abuse** for all chapters. This chapter also contains **minor character death**.

* * *

 **.**

 **Chapter One**

 **.**

Bucky wakes to ice and blood and cold fire in his limbs. There's a pressure at his jacket collar like a hand curled into the fabric behind him. He can't feel the wet chill seeping in through his pants as he's tugged away from the shore of the river.

He's being dragged somewhere. His head rolls forward bonelessly, chin resting against his chest. For a moment, he sees the trail of red in the snow off to his left, dark boots to his right. He doesn't think the men who found him are Allied troops.

 _Please_ , he prays. _Please, God, don't be Hydra_.

* * *

He wakes to a man on his left with a bone-saw buried in the mangled remains of his arm. The man's eyes crinkle at the corners like he's smiling behind the blood spattered cloth over his mouth.

"S-st-stop, _please_. . ." Bucky begs, his voice a horrified whisper. No one listens.

* * *

"James Barnes, sergeant, three-two-five-five-seven. . . three-two-five. . . seven-zero. . . Barnes, James. . . sergeant. . ."

He wakes to the sound of his voice in the sterile room. The lights are too bright and the colors all seep and fade into one another. Everything hurts. Someone asks him a question in a language he doesn't understand.

It isn't German. He doesn't know why that matters.

* * *

There's a doctor when he wakes. They ask him questions but he doesn't know what they want because he doesn't speak Russian. He screams for hours until his throat is raw and the noise dies out to whimpers and broken sobs.

* * *

He wakes strapped to a table.

"Сфокусируйтесь," someone says. A doctor in a white coat is looking down at him with a calm expression, clipboard in hand. His tongue is heavy in his mouth and he thinks he's supposed to respond. He wants to ask where he is, why they're hurting him. There's blood dried on his face, cracking when he opens his mouth to speak:

"Barnes," he croaks instead. It's a word. He doesn't know what it means. "James Barnes."

 _Why is that important?_

"Three. Two. _Five_ —" He doesn't remember the rest.

" _Ещё раз_."

* * *

He wakes with his hands around someone's throat and a loud, awful wailing sound ringing in his ears. The sound is coming from him but he doesn't know what it is or why it's happening. He's staring into the bulging eyes of a man in a white coat who is struggling against his grip. The man makes him angry, makes him ache in dark places deep inside.

His hands are mismatched, flesh and silver metal, both streaked red with gore. There is a body on the concrete floor. His feet are bare and wet. The man's neck snaps and the body goes limp. He drops it, stumbling back toward the wall.

There's yelling from the other side of the door. He sinks to his knees and tries to speak as men with guns file into the room.

Nothing comes out. He doesn't remember what he's trying to say.

* * *

He wakes to pain and death and the rush of water in his ears. There's a piano playing in the background, and the sound echoes in the empty halls, tumbles over the polished wood floors and along the high ceilings.

There's a man in a chair, twisting a silver ring on one finger. A young girl stands beside him. There's an armed guard by the door with a Kalishnikov.

" _Сфокусируйтесь на звуке моего голоса, Солдат_."

* * *

" _Тяжелая тренировка_."

The training is not hard. He doesn't know what he's training for.

* * *

He wakes to screams and tears and something warm on his hands that shocks him because he does not remember what warm means until now. It is something strange, an unfamiliar sensation. The weight of the knife in his hand is familiar.

The man with the silver ring is gone. The doctor with the smile and the bone-saw is gone. The girl beside him is not the same.

She takes the knife and hands him a gun.

* * *

He wakes in a bar, a piano playing behind him, laughter in his ears. There's a drink in his hands and he is wearing gloves. Someone asks him to dance in German. It makes his stomach twist but he smiles anyway and gets up from his seat.

He doesn't recognize his own voice when he agrees. The accent is American. He's never been to America.

* * *

He wakes on a rooftop behind a rifle. A man puts a hand on his shoulder and says, " _Сфокусируйся, брат мой. Ты возводишь величие этой страны_."

The bullet finds its mark. He disassembles the rifle, and tosses the man to his death. He is still standing on the roof, looking down at the broken body far below, when they retrieve him.

* * *

He wakes in an airport. The man with him is still not his brother. He rips the man's tongue out when he remembers that he's never had a brother.

* * *

He wakes in the desert surrounded by blood and spent shell casings. His clothes are burned and there's smoke drifting up from the remains of the building behind him. He misses the girl.

* * *

He wakes in the snow and thinks of the sound of a piano playing in an empty house.

* * *

He wakes in a warehouse with his mind hazy and his tongue heavy, mouth dry. The tank is empty and the air is cold. There is a woman. She tells him to focus, to stand, and he obeys. He must obey. She tells him that he must help his little sisters; they need their brother. She puts him on a train and takes him home.

* * *

He wakes with his with fingers in a little girl's hair, her voice sniffling, " _Больно_."

He makes her stop crying. A woman tells him that he must not hurt his sisters. She is his mother, and she knows best. He is not here to hurt them.

* * *

He wakes.

Why doesn't he ever sleep, he wonders. What is he waking from?

* * *

His mother oversees their training. There are guards at the big house to keep them safe. He has many little sisters. They are all so small, so strong, so beautiful. He is supposed to train them.

And their training is hard.

* * *

No one ever tells him their names. He learns them by listening to his mother and his sisters' tiny, soft voices in the dark. They speak in Russian, in English, in French. They whisper in German, in Pashtu, in Farsi. Their words are hushed in Tagalog, in Spanish.

Sophia and Darya are the youngest and the smallest. He doesn't let them train with the other girls because he's worried they will be broken too soon. Mariya is small for her age and is fascinated by the radio in their mother's office. Irina and Alina are a set of twins with blonde hair and dark blue eyes. Alina is a better shot and Irina has deft fingers for theft; they often try to take the other's place during testing because their mother cannot tell them apart. He knows which one is which because Irina still favors her left hand despite training to be ambidextrous.

Isolda smiles when she ties on her pointe shoes. He teaches her how to braid her hair before dance practice. Tatyana whimpers in her sleep sometimes, and once confided in him that she doesn't think she'll make it to graduation. Oksana is the most talented with a knife. Ekaterina is the strongest, but she is short-sighted and doesn't plan ahead during fights. Yelena is sly and quick on her feet. Natalia is the oldest, and their mother's favorite.

He does not have a name. He is a soldier in the Red Army and he has no need of a name. They call him 'Soldat' and tell him he has many sisters.

He is very protective of them all.

* * *

He is not allowed to speak to them outside of training. Sometimes he thinks he doesn't remember how to speak at all, but it becomes easier the longer he is awake.

At night, he whispers lullabies when they can't be overheard, tells them to be strong; he is their big brother and he will protect them from their mother and the guards.

* * *

They take his sisters away when they cry, and when they are taken, he can hear them screaming. Sometimes they call out for him.

* * *

He wakes with a muzzle.

They make him break, make him hurt, force him to bleed. His mother tells him that his sisters need him. He must train them to be strong, to survive. They must all focus. The training is hard.

He cannot speak. He does not know how and the muzzle impedes him further, cuts his mouth when he tries to open it. The taste of blood is familiar. His sisters do not startle when it drops off his chin to spatter their shoulders or their hair, when it tracks down their cheeks like red tear stains.

None of them remember how to cry.

* * *

The training is very hard.

The girls are too young, he thinks. Too small. He shouldn't be training them to kill. Tatyana breaks under his metal hand. They take her body from him, but not before he shatters the guard's bones and paints the room and hallway red with blood.

Everything hurts.

* * *

He wakes with his face wet. He is not awake for long.

* * *

He does not have a name. They call him 'Soldat' at the big house because he was a soldier in the Red Army a long time ago. He doesn't need a name. They tell him he has many little sisters, and that he must keep them safe.

They tell him that is all he needs to know.

* * *

His sisters are afraid of the guards. His mother hurts them. He must keep them safe.

It is all the soldier needs to know.

 **.**

* * *

 **Author's End Notes:** RedKitten has graciously offered to assist me with my translations, for which I am immensely grateful! As always, I appreciate any and all help/insight from my Russkiy readers. So if you notice things that make it obvious that I am a dumb American writer whose only Russian experiences include an exchange brother named Vladimir and some Ukrainian friends, please tell me so I can fix it! The Russian in this chapter is as follows:

Сфокусируйтесь = Focus

Ещё раз = One more time

Сфокусируйтесь на звуке моего голоса, Солдат = Focus on the sound of my voice, Soldier

Тяжелая тренировка = The training is hard

Сфокусируйся, брат мой. Ты возводишь величие этой страны = Focus, my brother. You are building the glory of a nation

Больно = It hurts


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Some changes have been made in the first chapter, as I've gotten help with the Russian and learned about naming conventions. Warnings for this chapter include an implied rape.

* * *

 **.**

 **Chapter Two**

 **.**

There are armed guards in all the rooms and all the halls of the big house where the Red Room trains them. They are chained to beds at night to keep them from running away. It leaves a mark on her wrist where the cuff bites into her skin while she sleeps. Natalia traces it with her fingers until it fades, and once it is gone, she can't help but wonder if it was ever really there at all.

* * *

She does not know how old she is, or how long she has been with the Red Room. She only knows that she is the oldest of the girls left. Her original classmates are all dead. Some, have died on mission. Most, have died in training. Many, have died at her own hand.

Truth is precious in the Red Room. Like the girls who remain, it is cold and hungry as winter, hard like their training. Natalia hordes all the truth she can find, hides it from the matron and the guards and runs through the things she knows at night so she doesn't have to sleep.

These are the things that she knows:

The Red Room carved her from ice and stone. It filled her with something dark and taught her to appear warm, how to laugh and smile and dance. It taught her how to kill and how to appear coarse, mean and resilient. The Red Room showed her how to shatter apart and use her own sharp edges to cut out the hearts of their targets. It has wrapped her in a shroud of death, and she touches up her lipstick with the same steady hands she has used to strangle their enemies. She has overcome every obstacle and excelled at every turn.

Once, there was a time before the Red Room. She had a mother, and a father, and a brother who loved her. Natalia remembers this. Sometimes. Maybe. She's not sure anymore.

Natalia wants it to be true, though, so she tucks the memory away for safekeeping and tries desperately not to fall asleep.

* * *

When Natalia sleeps, she dreams of walking through a big house with empty halls and vaulted ceilings. The floors are hardwood and cold beneath her bare feet. Snow falls, catching on her hair and eyelashes. Her mother is playing the piano downstairs, and the sound jumps and tumbles up over the steps and the dark bannister like a dancer, all graceful twirls and sweeping notes. She stands in a room with mirrored walls and frosted windows and stares at the ballerinas who rise in tempo, a living crescendo honoring the glory of a dying nation.

In the dream, her father is waiting in the field outside for her to finish her lessons. Blood is caked under her nails and there is a greasy carbon residue staining her palms and fingertips when she looks down. The dance instructor tells her that when she completes her mission, they will let her go home. Her brother hands her a gun, a knife, a thin length of garroting wire.

It doesn't matter. Natalia's body knows how to use every weapon they give her, knows all the complicated motions they direct her through. She feels hollow and empty, a confused partner following an unseen lead as the dancers surround her. She doesn't remember what her father looks like. The mother in her memory has no face.

"Focus," a woman says, softly. It drowns out the sound of the piano and claws its way down Natalia's throat in a cascade of red. The dream goes hazy, flickers falsely across the broken glass box of her mind. The dancers glimmer like gold in the harsh light reflecting off her brother's metal arm. "Focus on the sound of my voice."

The room cracks and falls away into concrete, bare and grey and wet. She lays down on a table made of aching bones, a sacrifice on the altar to the collective good. Her blood is ice and her eyes are wide and dry. A man in a white coat tells her to sleep. Someone will wake her when it is over, and it will all be over soon.

Natalia closes her eyes. She waits for someone to wake her, and is never certain if the dream ends or not.

* * *

When she graduated from training, a soldier pulled her aside. He used to be her brother, but now he is just the ghost of a man she once knew. The Red Room has unmade them all, remade and reshaped them into dangerous things, nameless and eternal.

"You are unbreakable," he whispered from beneath a mask that punished every movement of his mouth with cuts that never scarred. His eyes were pale and blue and familiar from her dreams. Natalia had nodded. She was very strong. She knew that she had always been very strong. "Like me. But where I am made of metal, you are made of marble. And as the eldest, we must look out for our little sisters. We are not here to hurt them. We must take care of them. Do you understand, Natasha?"

She did not, but she nodded again anyway. He touched her face with a gentleness she had never known before and has never felt since, and Natalia thought of her father waiting in the fields behind the big house and her brother smiling in the snow under the golden sun of a perfect day. She wished she could remember what song her mother used to play on the piano.

* * *

Usually, they send her out alone on missions far away from the big house. Sometimes, her brother's ghost and his handler will accompany her in a support capacity. This time, they send another girl with her to the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Isolda has been in the Red Room nearly as long as Natalia, and while she has not yet graduated, she is the most skilled dancer they have. This makes her the obvious front for such a mission. Natalia will still be tasked with the dirty work, which is a decision she approves of.

Isolda is the prima ballerina, the delicate grace and pride of the company, and Natalia will pose as her understudy. She will be the knife that pierces their target's heart.

This is fine. It is better, that she do it. Isolda is not used to missions that end with an assassination, and Natalia wouldn't want her to get blood on her costume during intermission.

"Natasha," the ghost reminds her from behind his muzzle. "We must keep our little sister safe."

"I'll take care of her," Natalia says, because of course she will. She is the eldest.

Her brother's eyes smile down at her from a dead man's face.

* * *

The mission is a success. After curtain call, Natalia goes to collect her sister from backstage so they can meet the soldier and his handler at the rendezvous point.

It isn't blood that she finds on Isolda's costume.

They sit for a long time in silence then, their backs to the wall and legs stretched out in front of them. Isolda's tights have been torn and her costume has been ripped up the back. She is very still and stares down at her pointe shoes, which she has not yet untied.

They are going to be late. The matron will be angry. Natalia does not care.

"This is foolish," Isolda tells her, and Natalia nods slowly, feigning understanding. She wants so badly to comfort but doesn't know how or what that might look like for girls like them. If Isolda was a target, or a passerby caught up with Natalia's cover, she knows what she would say. But Isolda is not. She is like Natalia, except that Natalia learned a long time ago that none of the other girls are like her at all. "I have trained for this. It has happened before."

Natalia's stomach flips sickly and she doesn't understand why.

"The training is hard," she agrees.

"Yes. And it wasn't supposed to happen this time." Isolda looks up for a moment, then back down at her shoes. There is a smeared fleck of semen on the instep, near her heel, discoloring the satin fabric. She pauses, then says in a very small voice, "I just wanted to dance. He did it on the stage, in the crossover. I could still hear the audience applauding my performance."

"Tell me who did this," Natalia orders. She is the Black Widow on this mission, the senior agent until they rejoin the soldier and his handler. Isolda has to do as she is told. She has no choice but to comply.

"He ruined my costume," she says instead, like she has not heard Natalia at all. Her breath hitches painfully, but she does not cry. "It was so beautiful, and he ruined it."

Something dark and ugly coils under Natalia's skin, seeping out from between the sculpted stonework of her ribcage. If she had returned sooner, she would have been there to stop it. They were supposed to be ballerinas, treasured jewels of the Bolshoi, and no one was supposed to know the Red Room had sent agents to the theater. But she could have killed the man or ordered Isolda to break her cover. Natalia puts her hand over Isolda's on the floor.

" _Focus_ ," she hisses, and watches Isolda's eyes go glassy and distant as she slips beneath waves of red and gold. "Focus on the sound of my voice."

* * *

These are the things Natalia knows:

At the big house, all the men are chemically or surgically altered. None of them have ever tried to use her or any of her sisters for their own pleasure. They cannot. The girls training to be Black Widows are too valuable, too precious a resource, to be squandered in such a way, and the Red Room does not take unnecessary risks.

In light of this, she had assumed the man who hurt Isolda was a sponsor or a patron or a stage hand. Perhaps even the ballet's director. Someone organic to the theater, surely, because no one who knows about the Red Room would be stupid enough to lay a hand on her.

She also knows that a man from the theater could be killed as collateral damage.

Natalia would be punished, of course, for straying from the mission parameters and breaking protocol, but that would be fine. She is very strong, and she knows that she could bear the burden of punishment for them both without breaking. Natalia could say that the man stumbled upon her interrogation during the intermission and she had to dispose of his body after the performance, causing them to miss their pick up. No one would ever have to know what really happened.

This is something she did not know until Isolda told her:

The soldier's handler is not a eunuch, and his name is Dmitri.

This, she decides after a moment's hesitation, will also be fine. A Black Widow is nothing if not resourceful, and none weave webs as dangerous as Natalia.

* * *

They are so late to the rendezvous that they have to stay the night in Moscow.

Natalia knows how to be sweet, how to be coy and desirable. Her body is sleek and hard with muscle, just beginning to curve and go soft with womanhood. The Red Room trained her well. She laughs and smiles and brushes Dmitri's arm with teasing, lingering touches, as she has been taught. His eyes grow dark and hungry as they follow her movements.

When he comes to her later that night, she kisses him and lets him push her down onto the bed she is sharing with Isolda.

"Stop," she says, knowing he will not.

"You're hurting me," she says next, and the ghost in the other room comes alive.

* * *

After, Isolda spends a long time looking down at where Dmitri's broken body lay on the floor next to the bed.

"Why did you do that?" she finally asks.

"You are my sister," Natalia explains. "I said I would take care of you. Now, he can never ruin your costume again, and you know exactly how to make it stop if anyone else tries."

"We will get in trouble for this," Isolda notes.

"No," Natalia laughs, giddy on the knowledge, on the surety of truth, and flops back on the bed. "The soldier killed his handler. We have done nothing wrong."

* * *

There is snow on the ground outside when they return, and overhead the sun blazes gold and perfect above a sea of blood. Her father is buried in the field behind the big house, and her mother is the sound of a piano playing in an empty room.

"Focus," a woman orders in a soft voice that blurs and smears across her mind like the shadow-whisper of a blade being unsheathed. She can't remember who she is supposed to be anymore.

"The training is hard," a man in a white coat says, as she drowns in the blood she has spilt and forgets what it feels like to be clean.

"You are building the glory of a nation," someone tells her, as her skin burns and blisters and peels back to reveal dappled rock beneath. She can't find the scars they ought to leave behind.

"Natasha, my sweetest heart," her brother whispers, touching her damp hair, her blank face, the gaping wound of her slack mouth. She lays very still on the altar made of the bones of the collective as his metal fingers, cold and steady like his pale gaze, trail over her heaving chest and stomach. He presses his muzzle against her temple, smudges a sticky wet heat across her skin, and murmurs, "You are made of marble. Unbreakable."

* * *

It will all be over soon, she remembers. She just wants to wake up.

She is terrified that she already has.

* * *

Natalia does not know who the first Black Widow was. She only knows that she will not be the last. For now, she is the best Black Widow the Red Room has ever seen, and she will ensure they have no choice but to use her and punish her instead of the other girls. This is fine. It is better, that she do this in their place. Because she is strong.

She is the eldest.

She is made of marble.

And Natalia.

Does.

 _Not_.

 ** _Break_**.


	3. Chapter 3

Every month, they are tested to evaluate their training progress, and that is the only time Darya sees the man in the mask anymore. She thinks that she has known him her whole life. Her whole life, she is aware, is not a very long time at all, because she is very small. She has been told that she is the smallest and the youngest of all the girls at the big house; even Sophia and little Mariya are bigger than she is. But Mariya no longer trains with them because she has graduated, and Darya's class is very small. It is the smallest the Red Room has ever seen. New girls are supposed to come, but they do not. The guards and the matron whisper about the fall of a great nation and mourn the loss of their comrades where they think the girls cannot hear them.

But Darya hears a lot of things, and they don't always make sense. She is scared and she doesn't like it. Sophia hushes her when she says this and tells her that she mustn't ever cry. If she cries, she will be in trouble. When they get in trouble, they are taken to the basement and punished. Darya can't remember if she has ever been taken to the basement before, but whenever she sees the stairs leading down there, she gets cold and starts to tremble and can't make it stop until someone leads her away from it.

Sometimes she can hear the older girls screaming when they are taken. Sometimes the only thing she can hear is the piano echoing down empty hallways and along the vaulted ceilings throughout the big house. Both keep her up at night. She is not sure which is worse.

"Don't take Sophia," Darya whispers to the man in the mask during the next test, her voice quiet so the guards by the door will not hear. She knows that one day soon, Sophia will graduate from her class and have to join the other girls. When that happens, Darya will be left all alone with the guards and the matron until the man in the mask has time for her lessons and tests.

She is scared of this. They are very scary.

The man in the mask crouches in the aisle next to Darya's little chair and watches her pick the rifle up off the desk. It is too big a rifle for her to actually use, but they don't get bullets during testing so she tries not to worry. She struggles with the cam pins and unlocking the hand guards, because they are tricky and her fingers are short and often uncoordinated. Sophia does not look up from where she is disassembling her own weapon at the desk on the other side of the aisle.

"It's part of your training," he reminds her, his voice muffled by the black mask the matron makes him wear. She has never seen his face. She isn't sure if he has one underneath it. Darya sets each piece of her weapon aside with ponderous deliberation. She frowns at the layout before sneaking a glance at Sophia's desk, and then quickly rearranges the placement of her rifle spring and the lower receiver so that they match.

". . . The training," she says after a moment, the words falling clumsily out of her mouth as she tries to remember how she is supposed to respond, "is hard?"

"Yes, Dasha," he murmurs. It takes her a few seconds to realize that he is referring to her, because no one else calls her that. She knows that she is sometimes supposed to respond to names that are not her own, though, as part of her training. "The training is hard and you have to focus."

Darya pauses, turning in her seat to meet his pale eyes above the mask. Sometimes, his gaze will clear as though he is waking from a long dream, and when this happens, she knows that she is supposed to alert the guards or the matron.

But he is not awake. His eyes are grey-blue and distant, like the sky outside that she has never stood under.

"I don't want to be alone," she whispers, before returning to her task on the desk. He hums thoughtfully and brushes her hair out of her face where it falls across her forehead and into her eyes. Darya wrestles the rifle's bolt-assembly carrier from the upper receiver and begins clicking the pieces apart. She is glad that he is not awake, because she does not like alerting the guards or the matron. They scare her, and hurt her, and the man in the mask never does. He is very gentle with her, very careful, even when he is not awake.

Someone told her once that he was a brother — her brother, maybe — but she has no memories of a time before she joined Sophia's class in the Red Room. If he was her brother, she thinks it would explain why she isn't afraid of him the way she is afraid of all the other men here. Families are supposed to be safe. Darya knows this. But it is hard, sometimes, to remember what she knows and what she does not. There are some things that she knows but isn't supposed to know, and Darya tries very hard to be good and forget them. There are other things that she is supposed to remember, but keeps struggling to recall.

Their training is hard. This she never forgets. She doesn't remember the individual lessons, but the training as a whole is very, _very_ hard.

"Soldier," Sophia says, because that is what they are supposed to call him. He was a soldier in the Red Army a long time ago and he doesn't have a name. He has no need for names like they do. Sophia is much better at remembering this than Darya is. It is hard for Darya to remember that the man in the mask is a soldier at all. She likes to think of him as her brother, though, when she can remember that that is what he is. "I'm done."

"Good. That's very good, Sonya, you are doing so well," he tells her, twisting around to check her work. Blood drips down his chin behind the mask, a few stray drops falling onto the desk. Sophia smiles, wiggling in her seat at the praise and her own special name. Darya makes a face at her behind her brother's head. "Now, can you show me how you put it back together?"

"Yes, Soldier," Sophia answers, and does as she is told. Her rifle is reassembled by the time that Darya finishes taking hers apart, which worries her, but her brother assures her that this is fine. She is very small, after all, and cannot be expected to work as quickly as Sophia. He has Sophia disassemble the rifle again, and then gives her one of his pistols from a holster at his thigh. When she has broken that weapon down as far as she can, he tells her to mix up all the little pieces on her desk before putting the weapons back together.

Sophia is chewing her lip and trying to determine which firing pin goes where when Darya is finally done with her task. Her brother watches her go through her functions check to make sure she does each step in order. She lifts the rifle, leaning back in her seat to allow gravity to press the rifle's weight into her tiny shoulder because she cannot hold it one-handed yet and needs a free hand to pull the charging handle back. She lets that go so it can snap into place once more, fumbling as the bolt slides smoothly forward. Darya hits the assist with the heel of her palm to make sure it has fully closed, and almost drops the rifle as she readjusts her hold. She has to use both her thumb and forefinger to click the selector switch off 'safe.' Finally, she can hold the weapon again in both hands as she listens for the hollow, empty _thunk_ the weapon makes when she squeezes the trigger.

Darya used to need her brother's help to lift this rifle, but she has gotten bigger, gotten stronger, since she came to the Red Room. Now, she can do it all on her own. Darya is very proud of this.

Her brother's gloved hands slide along her arms to correct her form, tucking her elbows close to her torso and adjusting her grip so that the barrel rises properly. His fingers are silver metal and black leather on the blued steel of the weapon. Her own look pale and stubby where they are caught between the two.

Darya finally sets the rifle down on the desk. She beams at her brother. "Soldier," she says, maybe a little too loud in her excitement, "I am done, too."

He does not hand her a pistol.

"Dasha, you are doing so well. Here. Come here," he whispers, before she can start to tremble and shake. He pulls her from her seat and makes her stand in the aisle between the desks, positioning her so that she is facing the front of the room. His knees are on either side of her legs, his body solid and warm through the leather of his jacket where she can feel him against her back. He puts her right hand on her chest over her heart, which is beating very fast. She digs her fingertips into her collarbone and tries to remember what she is supposed to do next.

Words. There are words to be said now. She is supposed to say something, but can't remember what. They have told her to remember so many things, in so many languages, and it isn't fair. Darya is very small, after all, and she has not been in training for as long as the other girls. She does not want to fail. She wants to pass the test and go with Sophia and her brother up to the next class. She doesn't want to be all alone with the guards and the matron.

"I pledge allegiance. . ." her brother begins for her, in English, leading her through the next part of the test. She's not sure that he is supposed to do that. "To the flag."

There is a flag up there, pinned above the empty blackboard, but it is not their flag. There is no blue on their flag, and Darya doesn't like this one. The stripes make her think of broken bones, glistening white through ruptured red flesh. Her lower lip starts to quiver. She is so very scared of failing the test and being alone.

"Dasha." Darya has never felt her brother's breath on her cheek, because his mask stops that particular sensation from ever reaching her. When he presses his face against hers, though, his blood smears off the mask's rough texture and onto her pale, smooth skin. It is a hot, sticky, familiar feeling that comforts her. Grounds her. She realizes she has been holding her breath and inhales deeply on a gasp. "Say it, Dasha."

"I pledge allegiance," she repeats dutifully, blinking back tears as her vision starts to blur. It won't count as crying if they never leave her eyes. They won't punish her for tears that don't fall. Not yet, anyway. "To the flag."

"Of?" he prompts, tone lilting up at the end helpfully.

"Of the United _Amerika_."

"United States of America. And?" Darya furrows her brow and scrunches up her nose, trying to remember how it is supposed to go. She wonders if he will stay with her after testing, if he will hold her close and speak to her in that soft, sweet way he sometimes gets before waking, or if he will have to take Sophia away as soon as it ends.

"And to the. . ." she hesitates on the word, then forges ahead as best she can, "The _Respublik_ —"

"Republic," Sophia mutters the correction under her breath, her head bent over the pistol as she fusses with the uncooperative slide stop. Darya hiccups, her diaphragm spasming with anxiety.

"— f-for which it stands. . . under. . . under the nation. . . with. . . with the liberty, and. . . and the. . .?"

"That's not how it goes," Sophia whispers urgently. Darya knows that's not how it goes, but the guards are watching them now, heads tilted as they listen in with their hands on their guns. One of them breaks away from the door. She is trembling and cannot stop. Her chin drops to her collarbone in an attempt to hide the tears she can't keep from spilling out.

She can't remember any of the other words.

"For which it stands," her brother says, soft and warm and gentle. He ignores the approaching guard. "One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Start over, _ku_ _kol_ _ka_. Say it again."

But she can't. She will not graduate now. She knows she has failed the test. Darya sniffles and tries to follow her brother's instructions, but the guard stops in front of her. He is very tall, and the breadth of his uniformed shoulders block the view of the flag. She knows she is only supposed to pledge allegiance to a flag she can see.

" _Poydem s_ _a_ _mnoy_ ," the guard orders. Darya stares at his scowl and knows that she doesn't want to go anywhere with him. " _N_ _e nad_ _o_ _tak b_ _oya_ _t'sa_ ," he lies, and she knows that he lies because she has spent her whole life knowing there is a reason to fear him. The guard reaches for her, his big hand closing high on her small arm, intending to pull her away for punishment.

Her brother does not let go.

"She is too young. Too small," her brother explains. They are back to speaking in Russian now, and her mind is struggling to accommodate the switch and make sense of what is going on. His mask has not moved away from her face. "You will break her," he warns, "like Tanechka."

"Soldier," the guard says, suddenly cautious. "Focus on the sound of my voice. Release her. Now."

"No," her brother replies.

Darya closes her eyes, and tries very hard to forget what happens next.

* * *

Sophia is kneeling with her behind an overturned desk when she opens her eyes. The man in the mask has them both wrapped up in his arms, rocking them back and forth. He is singing very quietly, so the guards don't hear, because he is not supposed to sing anymore. She likes very much when he sings to them. His vowels sound strange and foreign, the consonants not rolling or rumbling like they should. It makes Darya giggle a little, breathy and almost hysteric, the way it always does, like when he cuffs her and Sophia into bed at night.

His hands are red and silver and black. There is red in her hair and on her face and spattered on her clothes. It is familiar. When did she get used to that?

"You are both doing so well, Sonya, Dasha," he whispers, petting a hand over Sophia's blonde hair and leaving dark streaks of blood in the wake of his fingers. "You mustn't worry. I will train you to be strong. To survive. And I will keep you safe. I will protect you, always. You are my littlest sisters, and I would never leave you all alone with the guards and my mother."

Darya nods as though he has imparted more instruction. Sophia bites her lip, obviously still worrying despite his orders not to. But Darya knows that she is supposed to do as she is told, and so she does not worry. She simply leans further into his warm embrace, and listens to him sing. For the first time she can remember in a very, very long time, she doesn't feel scared at all.

 **.**

* * *

 **Author's End Notes:** The Russian in this chapter is as follows:

kukolka = doll

Poydem sa mnoy = Come with me

Ne nado tak boyat'sa = No need to be afraid


	4. Chapter 4

Leaving the Red Room is not a complicated process, not drawn out in time or screams or gasped breath. The soldier enters the dormitory room and doesn't even break stride as he slits the throat of the man on guard there with singular precision. Sophia stays behind him, hiding behind his legs, and Darya keeps her head resting on his metal shoulder while the body drops heavily to the floor. She has stopped crying, but won't let go of his jacket, her little fingers curled around the rough strap of the back holster harness over his shoulders like it's a lifeline.

The rest of the girls twist in their beds, tense and wary in the dark, chain links scratching whispers across the metal frames.

"Irishka," he says, and one of the twins sits up, her wrist suspended above her where she is cuffed to her sister across the rail of the headboard. The beds are in rows, arranged head to head for just such purpose. One girl might run if she was desperate enough, but the second rarely agrees to. "Come here."

Irina looks back to her twin, who shrugs, and a moment later, she has slipped her hand from the cuff and joined him. He hands her the knife, and pushes little Sophia towards her.

"Get the other girls up and dressed," he tells them. Only his mother has the key to their manacles, but Irina has been trained well and there are no locks that can withstand her nimble fingers if she puts her mind to it.

"Yes, Soldat," she says, and takes Sophia by the hand to show her how to pick the locks. He counts them carefully, and frowns. There are only ten here, and he thinks there were more. Are more? He always has trouble remembering when he first wakes up.

"Mashunya?" he asks, and a very small girl with brown hair and pale blue eyes looks up from the bed he is standing next to. "You are one of many?"

"Yes, Soldat," Mariya answers. "I am one of eleven."

"Ten," Natalia corrects her, stone-faced, from the other side of the room. Her bed mate, Yelena, blanches. "We are ten, now."

"Oh." Mariya pauses, and glances at the empty bed where Tatyana used to sleep. "I am one of ten, then," she says.

The soldier nods. His heart feels heavy and his eyes are very dry.

"Is this a test?" Alina asks, rubbing at her wrist.

"Yes. Follow me."

* * *

There is a light transport truck behind the big house, an old GAZ-33097 with faded paint and a canvas covered back. The soldier puts the littlest girls up front in the cramped cab with him and directs the rest into the cargo bed with the blankets from their beds. He counts them off as they go in.

"Can I drive?" Ekaterina asks, leaning on the tailgate with bright eyes and a hopeful smile.

"No," he replies, deadpan.

She scowls. He lashes the tarp flap down in her face and gets back in the cab.

"Where are we going?" Mariya asks. Sophia and Darya have been dozing since he showed them how to start the truck, leaning into one another for warmth, and Mariya immediately begins toying with the radio dial, trying to find a station that comes in clearly. He heads north.

"Yakutsk." It's the nearest city large enough to have an airport, but it's still over nine hours and six hundred kilometres away. They'll have to stop to switch out who sits up front so no one freezes.

He has decided that he is done losing little girls.

* * *

"What should we call you on this mission?" Alina asks when it is her turn in the cab. They've passed Aldan and refueled, and now the twins and Isolda are up front. He glances at her and then returns his attention to the road.

"What do you mean?" he asks. "I was a soldier in the Red Army a long time ago, and I have no need of a name."

"Yes, but we are not part of the Red Army," Alina points out. "And a soldier probably wouldn't have a truck full of children, so. What's our cover? What's our objective?"

"Will we be Black Widows if the mission is successful?" Irina asks, leaning around her sister to stare at him with wide eyes. "Is that what this is? Graduation?"

Isolda, the only one of them who has been on missions before, remains silent and doesn't tear her gaze away from where she is attentively watching the snow covered landscape pass through the dirty window.

The soldier hums thoughtfully behind his mask. He hadn't given it much consideration before, but Alina is right. There are many things they will need once they reach Yakutsk; food, funds, identification papers, a plausible explanation for why a grown man is traveling with ten underage girls. He's not sure where it is that he's taking them, only that he must take them somewhere far away from his mother and the Red Room. Yakutsk has an international airport, and he knows how to fly a plane.

"We'll say you are gymnasts, and get you matching uniforms," he decides. "I'll be the coach and say that we are a team traveling for a competition. You can make up your own last names."

"And we'll call you. . .?" Alina presses. The man who can no longer be a soldier sighs, and drums his metal fingers on the steering wheel.

"James, I guess," he says after another minute.

"Djeyms?" Alina repeats, wrinkling up her nose. It sounds more Russian coming from her mouth than his.

"It's short for Yevgeniy, isn't it?" Irina asks.

"I thought that was Djenya," Alina says.

Irina counters with confidence, "They're both short for Yevgeniy."

"Are you two gonna talk the whole time?" he asks flatly.

Alina crosses her arms over her chest with a huff and slouches down in her seat. "It's not our fault you picked a stupid name."

The quiet in the cab lasts for about two minutes.

"You should take that off," Alina suggests. He gives her a very unimpressed look over his muzzle. "A coach wouldn't wear a mask."

"I can help!" Irina reaches over to undo the latches and pull it off while he's driving. He has no idea what he looks like without it, but the cool air feels strange against his wet skin. The girls take one glance at him and then burst into giggles.

"What?" he asks, feeling suddenly defensive.

"You have a weird face," Alina informs him curtly. Irina nods her agreement. "No wonder the matron made you wear it."

He glares at them. "I'm gonna leave you both on the side of the road."

* * *

"Are you _sure_ I can't drive?"

"Katya, if you ask me that again," he warns, "I'm gonna make you walk to Yakutsk."

* * *

"She won't. Stop. _Touching me_ ," Yelena complains. Natalia glares at Oksana, who makes a face.

"Ksyusha, leave her alone," he growls. There is a pounding headache starting at his temples and they're only halfway there. Oksana mutters something he can't make out and Natalia reaches around Yelena to hit her in the shoulder. "Natasha, _no_."

"She started it," Natalia says. "I'm just looking out for —"

"It's not _my_ _fault_ Yelenka's a _big baby_ ," Oksana snaps.

"Am _not_ ," Yelena retorts.

"Are _too_."

"I swear, I will _turn this truck around_ and take you all back to the Red Room if you don't _knock it off_ ," he has to shout over them to be heard.

* * *

"But I really want to dri—"

"What did I say? Katya, _what did I say_?"

Ekaterina groans like she's dying and smooshes her face against the glass.

* * *

"Djenya," Sophia whines, "I have to pee."

"We _just_ stopped, like, _five_ _minutes_ ago, are you _kidding me_?"

* * *

"I'm not sitting with Oksanka," Yelena announces, loudly, and refuses to come out of the cargo bed. She's gonna freeze to death, and the man they've all dubbed Yevgeniy has just about had it with their constant antagonism of one another. He's really starting to regret his decision not to lose any of them.

"Lenochka," he says. "Do not make me come back there."

* * *

She makes him go back there.

No one is happy with the results.

* * *

"What are we going to be doing in Yakutsk?" Alina asks, for the _nine hundredth time_ when she gets back up into the cab. Yevgeniy thumps his forehead against the steering wheel and tries to remind himself that he loves his little sisters very, very much.

.

* * *

 **Author's End Notes:** 'James' isn't a Russian name, but 'Djeyms' would be the phonetic transcription of it, and Alina and Irina are mistaking it here for the actual short form/diminutive 'Djenya' because they have some similar sounds and none of the girls are very familiar with diminutives thanks to their time in the Red Room. 'Yevgeniy' is closer to the English 'Eugene' than 'James,' though.


	5. Chapter 5

The sun and temperature have both risen considerably by the time they arrive in Yakutsk. In the cargo bed, Yelena tugs the canvas out of the way so she can see the train yard and old tracks pass. Their brother parks the vehicle between two out of the way stacks of empty, rusting freight cars. She leans out over the tailgate just a little to squint up at the early afternoon sky, which is bright and clear. The snowfall from last night is wet and slushy on the ground, turning the top layer to mud above the hard permafrost the city was built on, and there are still wisps of fog drifting in off the river in the distance.

It's summer, she thinks, and is surprised that it has been so long since the last test.

She ducks back in and lets the tarp fall into place when she hears Yevgeniy open the driver side door. Natalia quirks a brow at her in the dark, nudging her gently with one shoulder.

Yelena nudges Natalia back, and shares a small, secret smile with her. She doesn't know what angle Natalia is working, looking out for her the way she has been since they lost Tatyana, but she knows better than to throw away an opportunity to get ahead.

Yevgeniy pulls back the canvas and drops the truck's tailgate, counting the girls off as they exit, ensuring he still has all ten. She makes sure to stay close to Natalia as they await further direction.

* * *

There is a safe house here that they will have to occupy by force. Yevgeniy splits the girls into two teams, and makes it very clear to them that in order for the mission to be successful, they must all come back undetected and uninjured.

Yelena isn't sure how the rankings work across different classes, or if their placement on the teams means something important or not. Ekaterina and Natalia are with the twins, tasked to acquire uniforms for them all from one of the city's more prestigious gymnastics academies, while the rest go with Yevgeniy to secure the safe house.

This is a test. And to pass, Yevgeniy says they have to take the safe house without sustaining any injury, but Yelena knows that an injury that goes undetected by an instructor is – in practice – the same as one that has not occurred.

Oksana gives her look that is all teeth and the muted promise violence behind their brother's back, and Yelena sets her jaw resolutely and pretends to ignore her.

She has become very good at not giving away when she is hurt, or when she is going to hurt someone.

* * *

Yelena has a simple relationship with the Red Room's ranking system. She had been one of fifteen when she first joined the program, in the same class as Tatyana and Oksana. The matron promoted competition among the younger girls, and had told them often that Natalia was the best Black Widow the Red Room had ever seen. She was the hand of the collective, and was helping their parents build a warm future for the glory of Soviet supremacy.

Only the best, the matron had said, would be allowed to graduate. It didn't take the girls long at all to learn that the strong ones at the top of the class received more food and better medical attention than anyone else, and weak girls died.

It was very simple. There were a lot of girls who were weak. They all died and were buried in the field behind the big house.

This is where it gets complicated:

Yelena knows she isn't strong. She has been fighting to hold onto second place for most of her life and the girl in second place cannot afford to be seen struggling. Second place is, arguably, the most dangerous rank to hold in the Red Room. It has none of the benefits of being first and all of the brutality and vulnerability associated with being thrust into the spotlight. No one rises unseen from second place, and whoever is in third is always ready for the perfect moment to strike.

Maybe she would have been a good agent elsewhere in the Red Room or some other part of Department X, but a Black Widow is more than just a good agent, and no matter how hard she tries, Yelena can't seem to meet those exacting standards. She knows that she isn't particularly adept at any of the tasks they trained on. She has to try _so_ _much_ _hard_ _er_ than the other girls to make it all look effortless and not let anyone know that this is the best that she can do.

She is like Tatyana was, and Tatyana is already dead.

So Yelena has to rely on being clever instead of good if she wants to survive. And she does. She wants to graduate and be a Black Widow and keep all her secret inadequacies hidden and safe. Her best, she knows, won't always be enough, but it doesn't have to be. She just has to fake it long enough to make it out of training, and then she doesn't have to worry about the other girls in the program anymore. If even the careful gazes in the Red Room can't expose Yelena as the fraud she truly is, then no one can.

* * *

The assault on the safe house doesn't go as planned.

Or maybe it does. Yelena's not sure what this mission is supposed to be testing, after all.

* * *

"Longing," a man says, and Yevgeniy hits his knees with a gasp, metal fingers twitching. He grits his teeth as the man goes on, in a flat, calm voice, "Rusted."

"No." Her brother tries to stand, but his body refuses to cooperate. Darya is shaking behind him, her mouth open and no sound coming out. They were supposed to do this undetected, but they've already failed, so Oksana doesn't draw her knife and Yelena doesn't reach for the pistol Yevgeniy gave her. A guard approaches from the kitchen. He has a rifle, and they are not supposed to fight the guards. That only ever makes it worse.

"Seventeen." The guard takes Sophia's hand and leads her away. Isolda reaches for her, but the man, who Yelena is starting to think might be Yevgeniy's handler, grabs her by the wrist. "Daybreak."

" _Run_ ," Yevgeniy begs as he starts to slip under the conditioning. Yelena's never heard her brother beg before, not even when the doctors cut him open in the basement at the big house. It's weird to see so much of his face; she knows it hurts, knows that it has always hurt, but normally she doesn't have to see it.

Mariya breaks away and dashes for the stairs up to the second floor. Sophia disappears with the guard into the kitchen. Isolda is staring at the handler's fingers. She is breathing very fast. Oksana has turned her head to watch Yelena with dead, icy eyes. "Furnace."

"Stop," Isolda whispers. Yelena doesn't know how she's even capable of speech right now. Her own heart has jumped up into her throat and she's thinking about punishments and their failing grades and how Oksana is going to overtake her in the rankings and then kill her while no one is looking.

"Nine." Yevgeniy goes blank and still, the plates of his metal arm shifting, the machinery humming as his handler looks down at him. The man is standing in front of their brother's complacent ghost, a mocking smile on his lips as he says, "Benign."

" _You're hurting me!_ " Isolda's voice is shrill and piercing and terrified, and her eyes are wet and she's crying and Yelena can't remember ever seeing any of the girls cry.

She doesn't remember seeing Yevgeniy wake or move, but he's suddenly on his feet with his metal hand at the juncture of the handler's throat and jaw. She hears the bones crunch, the bloody gurgle of pain, the man's last, wheezing breath over shattered teeth. Her brother is snarling and forcing the man to stumble back clumsily as he is half-carried across the room. They slam into the wall hard enough to dent the plaster.

Yevgeniy drops the handler's limp body, and storms into the kitchen after the guard.

There is a gunshot, and Sophia finally screams.

* * *

Yevgeniy seems shaken when he returns from clearing the rest of the safe house. It was minimally staffed, and now that the guards have been dispatched, he instructs Isolda to take the younger girls upstairs and find Mariya. Darya has peed her pants and still won't speak, and needs a bath and new clothes. Sophia has blood in her hair again and won't stop biting her lip.

There is a bruise forming on the delicate skin of Isolda's wrist and Yevgeniy is fussing over a bullet hole in his side, but otherwise no one has sustained any injuries.

"Ksyusha, Lenochka," he calls to them. He has stripped off his jacket and shirt and is standing at the kitchen sink, a thin blade in his hand as he starts to pry the round out of his body. "There should be passports we can use in one of these rooms. Find them."

There's an uncomfortable moment of silence.

"Aren't you going to tell the matron we failed?" Yelena asks. He looks up from his task with a start. "When you take us back to the Red Room, I mean."

"No. No, of course not. You didn't fail, and I'm not taking you back."

Oksana frowns and shoots Yelena a questioning look. "We're still. . . proceeding with the mission, then?"

"Yes. Now, be good girls and listen to your brother."

The girls glare at each other but do as they have been told.

* * *

They find passports in what looks like the handler's office on the other side of the safe house. Yelena also finds a dull red book with a black star embossed on the cover. Inside, the pages are worn and fading and filled with jargon and code and strange things she doesn't understand.

She turns the pages slowly, frowning. Oksana looks up from the desk. Her eyes catch on the words _Homecoming_ and _Freight car._

"What is that?" she asks mildly, and Yelena knows that she isn't stupid but she can't help the dumb way she answers:

"I think it's. . . I think it's the soldier's manual."

They both freeze, the implication clear. Yelena is looking at the trigger phrases and control procedures for their brother. It will give her the advantage in future tests. She can tell that Oksana comes to the same conclusion in roughly the same moment that she has about what this whole disastrous scenario has been preparing them for.

Which is precisely why Oksana tries to stab her.

Yelena blocks with the book and snaps forward to strike her in the face with the heel of one palm. It quickly dissolves into a grapple, Yelena attempting to disarm Oksana and Oksana trying to get the book out of Yelena's hand. A leg sweeps Yelena's feet out from under her, and she goes down to the floor hard with Oksana's body on top of her, pinning her in place.

She twists, jackknifing her body, and breaks the hold. Oksana's blade clatters away under the desk.

They wrestle for a moment, quiet grunts and panted breaths because they don't want their brother to overhear this fight. Yelena manages to get behind Oksana with an arm locked around her neck. She squeezes, and Oksana elbows her in the gut, but she doesn't let up.

" _Focus_ ," she grits the word out through clenched teeth. "Focus on the sound of my voice."

"The training is hard," Oksana spits back. One of them will trigger first and Yelena knows that whoever does will win and come out on top. "And _you_ have to focus."

"You are one of ten," she says, desperately. She can't afford to lose now. She needs this more. Yelena keeps squeezing, trying to cut off Oksana's airway. "Black –"

"Widow agents with the Red Room," Oksana finishes for her. Her face is red and her struggling is starting to get frantic with adrenaline and too little oxygen. Yelena wraps her legs around Oksana's torso, clenching down hard on her ribcage.

"You are building the glory of a nation," she says.

"And the warmth of your parents will make up for –"

" _I am not dying in the Red Room with you_ ," Yelena hisses, and Oksana tries to cough. Her eyelids flutter closed for a moment, the tension in her body starting to go slack. Yelena holds on for almost a full minute after Oksana passes out before she scrambles to her feet and picks up the book. She tucks it into her waistband and makes sure that its slight bulk doesn't show under her shirt and jacket before grabbing the documents off the desk on her way out of the office.

* * *

"Where's your sister?" Yevgeniy asks when Yelena re-enters the kitchen. There's a field dressing over his wound and he's pulling his shirt back on. Yelena hands him the passports.

"Oksanka is checking for hidden compartments," she says. The book feels heavy and cold against the small of her back. He nods, and smiles at her.

"You've done well," he notes. A small bubble of pride and guilt and panic swells in her chest. "Help Isolda with the little ones."

"Yes, Djenya," she says, and manages not to choke on her own fear or give anything away. She stuffs her shaking hands into her jacket pockets so no one can tell she doesn't really feel calm.


	6. Chapter 6

"Ira," Natalia calls, turning to one of the twins outside the academy's rear entrance. "Get the door."

The girl huffs and looks at her twin, who offers up a small, helpless smile in reply. After a silent pause, they both shrug, the second only slightly delayed after the first. This always happens. They are mirror images, little blonde reflections of each other that no one can quite tell apart. It makes her blood boil every time. "Why don't you do it, Alya?" the girl Natalia had spoken to suggests. The other girl, who must be Alina because she was not called Irina, nods and pulls the necessary tools out of her left pocket.

"I've got it," she says, and crouches down in front of the door to pick the lock. Irina watches as a grimace flickers across Natalia's face before she can regain control of her features. Natalia glares down the empty street for a moment before lightly nudging Irina with her shoulder.

"I'll get it right next time," she promises. The other girl jerks back with a startled expression.

"You got it right this time," Irina says. Because she did. Natalia is the Black Widow, the senior agent on the mission until they return to the safehouse and rendezvous with the soldier; whatever she decides is true simply is. That's how it works and there's no point in arguing, even if Irina wants to anyway. She's. . . contrary like that. They haven't yet conditioned that out of her, she supposes. Maybe the matron keeps grabbing Alina for the retraining on accident. Natalia rolls her eyes but doesn't press further. The whole exchange makes annoyance settle low and hot in Irina's gut.

Alina finishes with the lock and pops up to her feet to open the door with a small flourish. "Look at that; I'm almost as good at this as Irishka."

"Don't brag, Alichka!" Irina teases, then adds, "We know you're really only any good for shooting."

Alina gasps in mock-offense. "Not true! Besides, you won't be good for anything at all when I break your fingers."

Irina nods somberly. "Yes, I'll be no good then," she agrees. Alina makes a small, hurt sound, eyes wide and mouth trembling. There is an uncomfortable moment where it feels like the earth is sliding out from beneath Irina's feet, because this is wrong, all wrong. Alina is tougher than that. She shouldn't make that sound, or that face, or —

Natalia scolds them for getting off-track. "Focus," she orders on her way past into the building, and the world shifts back into place with a shudder. Natalia gestures for the girls to follow her, and Ekaterina checks the street one last time before securing the door behind them. The academy is not empty at this hour. They can hear the athletes practicing in the other rooms, the sounds of bodies hitting mats and coaches shouting instructions. It smells like sweat and chalk and cleaning fluids, sunk deep into the wall paint and the cracks in the flooring, wafting up to the ceiling.

"You weren't supposed to play along," Alina whispers to her twin and it feels like drowning, like she's choking on red and gold and the taste of her own fear. That sounds like something _she_ should be saying, because Irina is the sensitive one. _Irina_ is the nice one, but _she_ doesn't feel _nice_ at all. And isn't she supposed to? She. . . She. . .

She has a ridiculous thought — _what if she isn't Irina? What if she has never been Irina? —_ that makes her laugh, loud and pitched too high, breathy and bordering on hysteric, until the other girls stop to shush her so they don't get caught.

* * *

In the Red Room, they respond to many names. She goes by Alina, Ana, Alexsandra. They call her Alisa and Alyona. She responds to all of them, and is attached to none. The matron can't tell the difference between the twins, and calls her Irina sometimes. Sometimes, they switch places on purpose, because they are good at different things now. They are not the same anymore, and that is wrong, because they are expected to be the same girl. They are trained together and tested together and punished together. They are chained to one another at night. They eat together and shower together and have all the same injuries, even if they don't get them the same way.

It is dangerous to disappoint the matron, and they do their best to bury the differences and cover for one another. But it is hard. She forgets which one she is now, and which one she is supposed to be. Is she Irina today? Is she Alina? Does the name matter, or only the differences in their skill sets? She doesn't know anymore.

* * *

"Katya, Alichka," the man they call Yevgeniy, the soldier who is not a soldier anymore, who she is supposed to think of as her brother but has never quite been able to, says when they return from the gymnastics academy. She doesn't think of the other girls as her sisters, either. Not even Alina, who is more her shadow than a girl of her own. The team pauses at the base of the stairs. "Come here."

Natalia takes the box of uniforms upstairs to make sure they fit the other girls, and Irina follows Ekaterina over to the kitchen entrance with Alina at their heels. Yevgeniy has lain out tarps to cover the tile and is in the process of stripping gear from several bodies near the back door, which is open. They look like guards. She watches him remove the first man's clothing and equipment and toss it onto the small, scuffed table that has been pushed into the corner of the room. He glances up and gestures for them to enter. The tarp crinkles under their shoes.

"Help me with these," he says, and gives Ekaterina one of his knives. "Tattoos." Irina is given a pair of slightly rusted pruning shears, probably from the shed she spots in the yard through the doorway. "Fingers."

"Yes, Soldier," Ekaterina says, and crouches by the dead man to begin cutting away the star tattoo on his shoulder.

"I don't want to," Irina complains, and Alina blanches, but reaches forward to take the shears from her with trembling hands.

"I can —" she begins, but Yevgeniy interrupts her with a stern shake of his head.

"No. Alichka is doing it. I want _you_ to get Ksyusha and show Mashunya how to clean up the main room."

"I. . . I-I am Alina," the girl says uncertainly, and the man stares at her. His silence is like a physical force, like the corrective procedures in the basement of the big house. It is an assault, a brutal surgery without anesthesia. Her eyes water, and the other girl's breath hitches dangerously; their vision blurs and smears and goes hazy all around the edges. The world shifts again, tilting on an uneven axis and spinning too fast, because they are wrong and he is right. He is the Winter Soldier, and whatever he says is the truth simply is.

"No, Irishka." Alina, the real Alina, can see the guilty relief that flashes across her twin's face before Irina can shutter it. Of the two of them, she knows that she has the stronger stomach. Yevgeniy must know this, too. It makes sense, then, that _she_ is Alina and is the one being tasked with this. She feels bad that they got it wrong today, but it isn't her fault. She doesn't know who she is unless she has a gun in her hand, and Yevgeniy didn't give them any guns for this mission. Irina squeezes her arm in apology and quickly backpedals out of the room to locate Oksana.

"This is stupid," Alina announces to no one in particular. Because it is. Why do they have to do anything with the bodies? Clearly, the test requires them to leave Yakutsk in short order; can't they just leave the guards where they are? They will all be long gone, either onto the next part of the exam or back in the Red Room, before the authorities manage to find them here. Yevgeniy lets out an exasperated sigh and rubs a bloody hand over his face. The action leaves a red smear across his mouth and chin, a streak from his index finger curving up his cheek toward his eye, before it drops back to his side.

"You gotta complain about everything, don't you?" Yevgeniy says without heat, the question clearly rhetorical. Alina shrugs and kneels next Ekaterina. She begins removing the man's fingers at the first knuckle. When the distinguishing marks are removed, the soldier takes the bodies apart piece by piece and she helps him roll them all up in the bloody tarps. There is an old car parked near the shed behind the safehouse, and Ekaterina opens the trunk for him while he carries the guards out. The teeth and fingers and ragged scraps of skin go in a plastic bucket Alina sets on the floor behind the driver's seat.

All four of the men fit in the trunk. Ekaterina smiles at their work and Alina scowls at her good mood. Yevgeniy playfully ruffles both their hair on the way back inside. They remove their own stained clothing and add them to the pile on the table when it is done; the soldier will probably burn it all before driving the bodies down to the river to dump. He instructs the girls to wash in the sink and the cold water runs pink while she scrubs diligently to remove the red caked under her nails. Yevgeniy flicks water off his metal fingers at her face, and she shrieks. She counters by throwing a handful of water at him, but he elbows her lightly and she misses, dousing Ekaterina instead. The other girl gasps and turns to retaliate. Alina runs for the relative safety of the main room, but Ekaterina tackles her, and they both fall to the floor on the other side of the doorway. Yevgeniy joins them a moment later, tickling them both until they are screaming for reinforcements and scrambling for the stairs.

It only dissolves further into chaos. Irina trips over Mariya as she tries to rush to her twin's aid, and Mariya grabs onto her leg so she can't get back up. Oksana lets out a whoop as she pounces on Ekaterina, hitting her repeatedly with a wet sponge. They roll off Alina to wrestle and end up overturning the container of soapy water they'd been using to clean the blood from the floor in front of the dented wall. Sophia and Darya peek down from the second floor with Isolda while Natalia vaults over the stair railing onto Yevgeniy's back. She pulls his hair, which sets him cursing, and Alina laughs until her chest hurts and her lungs burn.


End file.
